for Harsh

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There is no exact phenomenon.

Inside the bookstore, we move

past tangible metals, materiality

one acquaints with our reflections

in motion. Time is pulled a-

way as shadows begin to decline.

You gravitate toward the science

section—I try finding poetry in

nooks. Your hands reach toward

a book by Stephen Hawking. You

tell me how physics has somehow

not been the same for you after his

passing. You read a passage aloud

about all resonances between the

psychological and thermodynamic

arrow of time. Entropy also means

the disorder of a system, which can

only increase. You tell me how it is

rare for a physicist to be an expert

on time. I say that it is fundamental

to understand time and space to be

an active participant of history or

the future. You speak of how time

is an emergent property woven into

the fabric of reality. I bring emphasis

to tenses. I ask you about the final

book where Hawking reflects that time

travel cannot be ruled out, how

he believed research grant applicants

for the study would be dismissed.

We recollect a time when we were

in different countries: I showed you

a video of faint sunsets dawning from

Ochil Hills, and my momentum when

travelling upward, against gravity. We

remember how you carried food for

birds onto our terrace in India when I

was away, and the finite time it took

those signals of messages to reach us.

We spend another evening, this time

in one country, and discuss how

moving clocks tick slower than

stationary clocks, how gravity, time,

and distance intermingle, like love,

in constancy and surges of continuum.

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